My son got his learner permit today. He turned 16 on Friday, celebrating by skipping school and doing... I don't know, I was at work. He spent the day with his mother. He politely asked that I not take him to a government office to deal with paperwork, so we did it this week instead.
So, my 'technically' driveable car that's not going to pass inspection? Yea, he can learn to drive in that. If he absolutely wrecks it, I haven't lost much. No pressure really means no pressure this time.
I brought my car in to get the exhaust fixed, and they politely rolled it back outside and declared it dead.
Hold up.
So they told me that the thing I knew was broken was going to cost a mint to fix, which I more or less expected. But then he said not to bother because there was more rust than frame holding the back end together.
You know those car guys that get old rusty buckets from the 60's and spend years and a fortune putting them together and making them driveable? Yea that's what it's gonna take. He advised me to not hit any potholes on the way home.
It's still technically street legal until August, so I have time to figure this out.
Remember when I was told about the timeframe for getting the van back, the guy on the phone said "a couple of weeks"? I was told I can get the van today. I can always appreciate when things take less time than expected. This also means I can get to work on the other car problem. My car exhaust is broken somewhere. It's still drivable, I just can't sit idle for awhile otherwise I get gassed out.
And it's loud. Go figure it's always a daisy chain of problems all hitting at once.
Last year when I had my van inspected, the rear springs needed to be replaced for it to pass. I could see the back end was hanging down, it was a no brainer. But the dealer that was doing the inspection didn't have a set of springs. They couldn't *find* a set of springs. A couple of weeks later, they had found and purchased a full rear assembly to get the springs out of it to put in my van so they could get their loaner back.
Well I finally got a call about the van door. The good news is that everything is covered by the warrantee. The bad news is that they have to replace the door motor (which I believe should be easily bypassed so you can just, you know, open the door on your own), but the motor is on back order and will take a couple of weeks.
Everything with these people is either on back order or unobtanium. The next time I need to buy a car, I'm going to look at where they're built and where parts are sourced, making sure it's domestic. That way when they say they can't find one, I'll just go get it myself.
I avoid energy drinks. A mere cursory glance at the ingredient list suggest half the can should be a controlled substance, but here we are. This past weekend a friend of mine left one, unopened, in my car. I elected to ignore it, but then we lost an hour.
Normally I just wing it. This morning, however, I was not having it. I forced myself out of bed and slogged through getting up. I was not going to let some bureaucrat that won't end this silly practice to get the best of me. I was going to the gym no matter what.
Then I got in my car and thought "Can't hurt". I had a very good workout.
Work turned out to be very busy. I was the only one that could do shipping, so I did everything. It was just over 400 pounds of stuff that needed to get moved around and packed, then moved around again. Done, ezpz. Then a truck with a literal ton of product arrived, and I'm the only one that can unload it. Again, done. I have been buzzing around like a hummingbird all day. The most caffeine I'll have in a day is a sugar free 53mg. I looked at this can and it has 200mg.
oh
At least I had it on such a busy day. I'd have been bouncing in my office otherwise. I still kinda am.
You read the title correctly. My van has those doors that have a motor. You can't just grab the latch and pull it open. You pull the latch, then back off and wait while it slowly opens by itself. You can't bypass this, you just have to wait. You can use the remote to open the door when you're approaching, which is handy if it's raining and you don't want to get any wetter. It was also handy when dropping off the kids and they, for some reason, just open the door and run completely forgetting to close the door.
They don't do that anymore.
The downside is that it's just another thing that can break, and guess what. It did. First time, I was able to just pull it shut. Same with the second time. After that, we told the kids to stop using that door until we could get the issue settled. I should have seen it coming, because every single time we would use the van I had to stop a kid from opening that door.
Until I missed one.
Then of course it was wide open, only this time, the roller broke free of the track and broke the adjacent window. Now the door won't close at all. Sure you can still drive the van, but nobody likes cosplaying as a Jeep Wrangler in March.
It's cold.
There's also the weather to deal with. Fortunately, I was able to move it into my grandfather's garage next door to avoid any issues, like the three inches of snow that fell that very night. The service center at the dealership can't see it until the 12th. Meanwhile my parents had a spare car kicking around they're letting my wife borrow so she doesn't have to listen to the van scream about how the door is open while the cold wind freezes her out.
Honestly she would hate that.
No, not United Nations birthday. A Mad-Hatter / March Hare UN-Birthday as in it's not your birthday but whatever we're gonna party anyway.
That's what my wife gets three out of four times. Her birthday isn't today, and it isn't tomorrow. For a brief instant, her birthday will exist and immediately end as the clock strikes midnight. She keeps it pretty tame (not like the previously mentioned lunatics), but it gets suppressed right until the real thing comes around, then she gets four years worth of party all at once.
So yea, this year is low-key.
